The main objective of this malware does seem to be counter-espionage, Kaspersky notes patterns consistent with other such examples, but because it operates in kernel there are no limitations to the information it can collect. Credit card numbers, password hashes and identification codes (such as social security numbers), are just a few examples, but it is essentially any dataset.

"The discovery of Slingshot reveals another complex ecosystem where multiple components work together in order to provide a very flexible and well-oiled cyber-espionage platform".

The malware has been christened as Slingshot, which smartly exchanges the legitimate scesrv.dll file of the users with another a malicious one in the Windows library system. During these attacks, the group behind Slingshot appears to compromise the routers and place a malicious dynamic link library inside it, that is a downloader for other malicious components.

It can bypass security measures, such as Driver Signature Enforcement, by loading signed vulnerable drivers and running its own code through those security holes.

That includes a kernel-mode module called Cahnadr, and a user-mode module called GollumApp.

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Over half the compromised computers were in Kenya and Yemen, with the remainder in Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq, Tanzania, Greece, Jordan, Mauritius, Somalia, Tunisia, Turkey, and United Arab Emirates.

Kaspersky didn't speculate as to why machines in these nations were targeted.

That's likely why a nation-state is behind the attack. However, the researchers did discover debug messages within the code that were written in flawless English. Coincidence? We're not so sure. Text clues in the code suggest it is English-speaking; however, accurate attribution is always hard, if not impossible to determine, and increasingly prone to manipulation and error. It's called Slingshot and it was recently discovered by Kaspersky Labs.

After a router is infected, the malware would load a couple of "huge and powerful" modules on the target's computer. Despite being in the wild since 2012 - and still being in operation during the last month - Slingshot has, until now, avoided detection. For example, it was able to hide from detection by using an encrypted virtual file system that as cloaked in an unused part of a hard drive. Slingshot is also capable of accessing the data on an infected machine's hard drive or internal memory due to the ability to access an operating system's kernel level.

"Slingshot is very complex, and the developers behind it have clearly spent a great deal of time and money on its creation", company researchers wrote. "Its infection vector is remarkable - and, to the best of our knowledge, unique", the researchers noted and explained that as of February 2018 Slingshot still appears to be active. And while the infected routers that have been identified will be fixed via software updates, there's no telling how many machines may have been affected.

"The malicious samples investigated by the researchers were marked as "version 6.x", which suggests the threat has existed for a considerable length of time", the team said in a blog post.

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